High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 281: Mindset Separates the Best with Jeff Locke, NFL Punter

Episode Date: October 6, 2019

Jeff Locke is a professional football player who was drafted in the 5th Round of the NFL Draft in 2013. Jeff spent 4 years as the starting punter for the Minnesota Vikings and continued his career with the Colts, Lions, and 49ers over the next 2 seasons. He most recently played for the Arizona Hotshots of the AAF. He earned his degree in Economics from UCLA and was a 4-year starter on the football team. While in the NFL, Jeff enjoyed spending some of his time as a mentor and advocate with ACES, a program that provides sports-based curriculum to improve math skills and social-emotional learning for low-income students. He has also developed and presented financial literacy presentations to the rookie groups of each NFL team he has been a member of. He has a passion for financial education and plans to dedicate a part of his post-football career to helping others improve their financial well-being. In his downtime, Jeff loves spending time with his girlfriend, golfing, and riding his bike. He enjoys reading across multiple disciplines, such as history and psychology. An Arizona native, he now resides in Santa Monica, California.  In this podcast, Jeff and Cindra talk about: How mindset is what separates the best 2 practices of the World’s Best 5 ways the mental game helped his game Why mastering the process over outcome is essential Why he still mediates every day You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/jeff.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to episode 281 with NFL punter Jeff Locke. Now, if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then this is the podcast for you. Every week we explore various topics on mindset. I have a short podcast episode that I record about five to seven minutes and then

you'll hear from a guest on the topic of mindset. And today I am pumped to introduce you to Jeff Locke. Now Jeff Locke is a professional football player who was drafted in the fifth round of the NFL draft in 2013. He spent four years as the starting punter for the Minnesota Vikings and continued his career with the Colts, Lions, and 49ers over the next two seasons. He most recently played for the Arizona Hot Shots of the AAF. He earned his degree in economics from UCLA and was a four-year starter on UCLA's football team. While in the NFL, Jeff enjoyed spending some of his time as a mentor and an advocate for ACES, a program that provides sports-based curriculum to improve math skills and social-emotional learning for low-income students.

He also developed and presented financial literacy presentations to the rookie groups at each of the NFL teams that he's been a member of. He has a passion for financial education, which you'll hear about in this interview today, and plans to dedicate part of his post-football career to helping others improve their financial well-being. So Jeff also loves spending time with his girlfriend. He likes spending time golfing and riding his bike. And he enjoys reading across multiple disciplines, as you'll hear in this interview today, including psychology. So he's an Arizona native and now resides in Santa Monica, California. And in this interview, we talk about how Jeff describes how the mindset is really what

separates the best from the rest. We talk about two practices that the world's best do related to their mindset, five ways that the mental game helped his game as an NFL punter. He talked about why mastering the process over the outcome is really essential in sport and in life. He also describes how he meditates every day and his reasoning for that. And then at the end of the interview, he talks about the psychology of finances and what we need to know about that topic. So I know that you're going to enjoy today's interview with Jeff. My favorite thing that he said today in the interview is this. He said, mindset is what separates those

from others. Mindset is what separates the best from the rest. All right, let's bring on Jeff Locke. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast today. I have Jeff Locke on the podcast. So Jeff, how are you doing? Doing great, Sandra. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I cannot wait to talk to you. I know that you're going to give so much value to everybody who's listening. So I've been looking forward to this all week that we were going to have this interview. So thank you again for joining us. Yeah, no, it really is great to talk to you again.

After the experiences that we've been through together in our work, it's great to kind of get to talk to you about some of these things with other people listening now. Yeah, for sure. And so one of the things we kind of just want to state at the beginning is I don't normally have my clients on the podcast. And Jeff and I were talking about it, you know, how it's a little uncomfortable for me, which I think it should be uncomfortable in terms of, you know, we have a strict confidentiality code in terms of we don't association for applied sports psychology. We don't talk about you know, we have a strict confidentiality code in terms of we don't, the Association for Applied Sports Psychology, we don't talk about our work unless we have client consent. But I talked to Jeff about doing this interview. And the reason I wanted to do it is because I think, Jeff, you know, you've practiced these principles and really studied them. And I thought it would just be great to have a conversation that people could listen to about how they can use mental training, how you've used it.

And, you know, just with the idea that we're really, we're doing this conversation to help people grow and learn. Yeah, and I totally, I totally agree. A lot of this stuff, some people might think would stay confidential. But I'm the type of person where I think if I can try to help as many people as possible with these things to get to their highest level, like I did in the NFL, I'm very open to sharing all of my ups and downs. I think that really is going to help people kind of apply it to their lives. Yeah, for sure. And I'm going to take Jeff's lead here. So just kind of follow the conversation.

So first, I'm just grateful that you're here to talk to us about your experiences and how you've trained your mind. So just to start us off, Jeff, tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're passionate about and what you're doing right now in the world. Yeah, I'm still very passionate about football and punting. I was lucky or fortunate, a better word, to play five years in the NFL for a virtual with the Vikings. And I'm in that, unfortunate might be a strong term, but I'm in that period where I'm on the tryout circuit, just trying to get back into the NFL. And aside from that, I spend a lot of time researching personal finance and psychology. I'm very interested in finance for when I'm done. And realistically, whenever I do decide to hang the cleats up, I will kind of dive into really

helping people to achieve better outcomes in finance. It's kind of where my passions lie. And there's a deep crossover between that and sports psychology and general psychology, which I started learning about with you. Yeah, that's awesome. And today what we're going to do is we're going to focus on, you know, in terms of your mindset while you're punting and your mindset in your life and how you practice that, what you practice now.

But then towards the end of the interview, we're going to talk a little bit about what you've learned about the psychology of money and finances. And I'm excited to learn from you about that because Because that's something I don't, I just would love to learn more about. So that's very, definitely has a lot of carryover with with sports psychology, but there's also a couple key differences, which I think you'll find interesting, especially. Yeah, cool. Okay, so let's, let's dive in. And how would you describe just the importance of your mindset to your own performance? You know, let's say in punting, you know, in general, how would you describe that? Well, in general,

to be the most general in the NFL, mindset is what separates the players from one another. To get to the NFL, you've essentially reached peak physical fitness. almost everyone does strong and as fast as you up to a certain point. So it's really the mental game, which is going to separate you that extra bit to really become the best of the best. So for me, I always had a very, very strong natural talent in terms of leg strength. And that kind of carried me through the end of college. And then when I got to the NFL, everybody was stronger than me. Everyone was bigger than me, the other punters. That's when I really, really had to focus on stepping up the mental side of the game to just be able to perform at that level.

Yeah, I like what you said about it separates the best from the rest, and it's really the mental game that allows you to thrive there. What did you and you don't don't name any names, but what did you see just when you watched people? Let's say, you know, even in your first year as a rookie in the NFL, what did you see in terms of what are the best do in terms of strengthening their mind and training their mind? I mean, the very first thing I saw was just how deliberate the best practice. It's just a totally different level than what you kind of see in college, where the best of the best kind of know it, and you don't really have to always put your best out in practice, because you know you kind of have the job, you're kind of the guy, at least at the

level I was playing at at and then when you get to the nfl it's just totally different everyone is literally the best at what they do like in punting there's only 32 of us in the nfl at one time so you're one of the top 30 35 in the world of what you do when you're an nfl punter so it's just the best really, really take practice extremely seriously so that when they come to game time, they're really just treating it like practice rather than having to step up their performance to be even better in the game. So when I think about like taking practice deliberately, I think about like having an intention at practice, having, you know, like

a goal at practice, staying focused, right? Being really smart with every decision you're making, not just going through the motions. Is that kind of what you mean? Or how else would you describe that? Yeah, I think that's really spot on. In the NFL, I knew I had 16, 17 weeks, and I would essentially have a plan in my mind for what I was going to be doing almost every hour of every day for those 16 weeks, knowing that I wanted to doing during each period of practice. I knew how many punts I was going to hit. I knew what types of punts I was going to hit a week in advance or even at least a couple of days in advance of that practice. So it was all planned out and I had my, my entire process already established and ready to go so that I could just use all my energy on the mental side of things when I was actually in practice. and that carries

over to the game so yeah like you said it's just being extremely deliberate about what I'm doing with the limited reps I'm going to get in practice and I know that if I do that it'll have the best results come game day. And what did you see Jeff do like in terms of the best of the best? What else did you see them do besides being really deliberate at practice? You'd be surprised how many guys don't I think the assumption is that a guy's kind of just have the natural talent and they just kind of show up. They were born with it. And that's the way it is. But that's not that's not at all how it actually is. When you get into an NFL locker room and we sit in on NFL meetings you're going to see like one way I put it is a lot a lot of guys in the NFL don't have a light

switch when I say light switch it means that they kind of just turn it on and off whenever they want like I'm going to try hard in this area of my life and not try hard in this other area the real the best of the best don't really have a light switch it doesn't just go on and off it's i want to be the best of the best in everything that i do so it's some things as simple as being the first guy there in the morning to the last guy to leave the really good players emulate that and they're the guys that stay in the film room and are watching ridiculous amounts of film until late at night or getting in early to do that type of stuff. They really just are always on when it comes to trying to be the best in every aspect. Yeah, awesome. What do you think about, you know, your experience as a rookie

and what was that like to play in your first, you know, game but also like sign that contract? So tell us a little bit about like what that was like and then how you handled that yeah it was very it was very special for me I was very fortunate that I got drafted which isn't super common among among specialists so that came with it a little extra money just to be to be frank because when you get drafted you get you get some guaranteed money with it but it also comes with a higher expectation of performance right we use the draft pick we use the draft pick on you now go out there and we want you to

play at a very very high level and I knew I could do it but to be honest in my rookie year I didn't have the mental side of the game yet I was all technique and all just trying to go by on raw talent. So I didn't really have a toolkit built out on my mental game that could kind of help me when adversity struck. One of the signs of a really good punter is that if you have a bad punt, you don't follow it up with another bad punt. You have a way to clear it and come back out and have a really good rest of the game after maybe an off first punt or an off second punt in the game and I just didn't have that toolkit I didn't have the mental techniques when I was a rookie and I didn't it was one of those things I didn't I didn't know what I didn't know when I was a rookie which is so you kind of go on raw talent you're just kind of having fun and

you're kind of enjoying the moment and then yeah that kind of kind of carried over my first game my first game in the NFL after the preseason was a very very bad game I played very poorly I didn't really know why in the moment looking back it was really simply because I was just too excited I was trying too hard rather than just kind of being being comfortable and relaxing and doing what I knew how to do. But it was definitely a welcome to the NFL type of moment. Losing the first game and playing bad never feels good. Yeah, yuck. I guess you get a sense of what the locker room was like. And so, you know, what advice would you give yourself if you could go back, right?

Because I think that's really meaningful for everyone who's listening. You know, what advice would you give yourself if you could, you, right? Because I think that's really meaningful for everyone who's listening. You know, what advice would you give yourself if you could, you know, as a rookie? Just to, I wish I could just tell myself to simplify my mental game. It was just, I was thinking so much about outcome, outcome, outcome. Like, what if I don't punt this well?

Like, I had a bad last one. How mad is my coach going to be at me if I have another bad one coming up? Yeah. I just didn't know any better. Yeah. Whereas looking back, it'd be, look, you had a bad first one. Let's clear it. Let's really focus on the process. Let's really focus back on our small little technique points we know that really work in the moment. And just take a deep breath and breathe because you just get, I just got so tense and worked up as a, as a young punter when it's really hard to perform at your best.

When you're so tense, you can't move your arms. It doesn't really work that way. No, it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. So I like what you said about process over outcome, right? Like what are the small techniques that you know that has been successful? Can you get back to that and worry less about, you know, the outcome or what coach is going to say and more about like the small things you have to do to be successful?

Yeah, it's easy for us to say, much harder to do in practice. Yes. You got so much going on in a game, not only the fans, you've got coaches on the sid a game, not only the fans, you've got coaches on the sideline screaming, not only at you, but at other players trying to get things corrected. You've got all these variables going on around you. And for me, as you know, Sandra, if I was able to focus on just where I wanted to punt the ball and focus on just the ball itself, like actual focus, you and I call it full ball itself, like actual focus.

You and I call it full ball focus, not looking at anything else, but that ball and where I want it to go. It essentially washes away everything else around me, and it keeps me so calm and locked into that moment that I can perform at my highest level. So being able to train that is essential, right? Like full ball focus that you're, you're able to lock out everything else around you, block out, right? And like lock in on the task at hand. And it's not easy. So let's dive into a little bit more

about like the techniques that you use to do that. First, I want to ask you though, Jeff, like, I always ask, you know, to people to describe like a time that didn't go so great for them and what they learned from it. You already described like your first game. So if you want to pass on this question, you can. Is there anything else that, you know, would just be helpful for us to know, in terms of maybe what led you to the mental game? Or you know, anything else that you struggled with that you know you've had to use the mental game to recover yeah I think I mean the toughest thing I ever went through in my career was 2015 in Minnesota I just had a really bad year I came in with an injury that

wasn't I wasn't at 100% starting the year and never really got rolling the way I wanted to and then we ended the year with just like a really, really tough playoff loss. And I did not perform up to the level I was supposed to in the playoff loss. And I was, to be honest, I was down in the dumps after I was getting a lot of, a lot of, a lot of hate on social media. I just was not in a good spot mentally. And I think,

I think I had approached you, Sindra and you had recommended I read a book called Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And I still have it. It's literally sitting behind me on my bookshelf right now. And it was tough to read it at first, but it really brought me back from a very bad spot in my career and really helped springboard me to a very very good start to my 2016 season which I I would have never thought I could do after what happened in 2015 and really the biggest takeaway for me was that if you have a truly truly a growth mindset these really really tough moments in your life are actually going to be a way to make you stronger

in the future. It's not going to chip away at who you are. It's going to be like a springboard for making even better when adversity strikes again in the future. So I had to like, I had to stare down what I had done wrong the year before, hence the name Obstacles of the Way, and see how it was actually going to make me even better going forward. And it was, it really was a tough six to eight months after that. But that that book and that concept really helped kind of carry me forward out of that out of that tough spot. And when you were reading The Obstacle is the Way, like what made it difficult? Like, was it just thinking about 2015 and how tough it was? You know, what was it about it as you're reading that made that book tough? And, you know, just was it the reality of the situation or what are your thoughts on that?

I think what made it tough is that we get, I think we get some advice out there that you just kind of ignore the problems, right? Instead of thinking about this big problem or this big thing going on in my life, I'm just going to put my focus elsewhere and it's going to kind of go away. But it's not really going to go away until you address it. So the easy thing for me would have been to hide, not talk to anyone, just hope in the back of my head that I was going to still have a job when I came back the next year and they still were going to trust me to do what I had to do. That could have been the easy way to kind of shrink behind it. But instead, I just took the bull by the horns

and said, I'm going to go out and I'm going to be the best possible punter I can be. But that's the hard thing to do. It's to really just look yourself in the face and be like, look, it happened. It was really bad. But you got to really work through it to get above it. Yeah, love that. Work through it to get above it like the and being attracted to the obstacle instead of like pushing it away. And I was just thinking about like, how hope is not a strategy, right? Just hoping it's going to get better isn't going to address what you're struggling with or how you're struggling. So one of the questions I want to ask you, and I think this is a real, a real issue for people, pro athletes for sure in every sport, but even, you know, people like me who are doing sports psychology, like the hate

on social media that you can get, it kind of holds people back maybe from posting on social media or, you know, I think it can be an obstacle that gets in your way and that's really negative if you really listen. So how did you handle that criticism from fans and on social media, like after that 2015 season? Yeah, it was, it was tough. Um, the most practical application, which I think most people understand is that if you block people, it's usually the same people over and over again, posting the bad stuff. So the bad stuff goes away pretty quickly after you block the first 30 to 50 people, um, which is not, to 50 people, which is not ideal.

You wish you didn't have to do it. But the opposite of that is that you just assume that everyone out there is negative and hates you, right? Which is not the assumption any of us want to make. And I really don't believe that's true in any way. So once you block that subset of people that really just want to dwell on the negative, and in reality, all they're trying to do is bring you down to their level, in a sense, they want to chip away at where you are and bring you bring you down a notch. Once you kind of eliminate that, it got it got a lot easier for me, the true fans kind of come out and they know that you're human, and they know that you're human and they

know that you made a mistake and they know that all of your being you want to go back and fix that mistake but unfortunately you can't so you're going to go out and try to do better the next time. There are great fans out there but it's just it really has gotten a lot more difficult with with social media really exploding to kind of separate the positive and the negative on those platforms. Right. It really is. And sometimes, you know, I know pro athletes will just like not be on social media during the season. You know, did it ever get to that point for you? Were you able to really kind of separate and just block people and then just look at it, you know, with a different lens.

Yeah, at first I wasn't very good at it. I think social media was so new. We were all so excited about it. And we started getting this negativity and we just internalized it right away. We didn't know how to cope with it because it was such a new experience to get such direct feedback from people you didn't know. So it took me a while. But like I said, really, the blocking really helped. It just kind of took me a while, but like I said, really the blocking really helps. It just kind of stops after a while. And, or if you,

if you post something or something happens after a game and you get negative comments, I just delete the comment right away. So I don't see it again on that post. So there are ways to do it where you're going to get negativity no matter what, but you become more and more immune to it through blocking and deleting. Because I think it's, it's, if you want to have positive outcomes for yourself on social media, you kind of have to put those strategies in place. Yeah. And I think you can start believing in that, you know, when there's so much hate coming at you, then you might even question, if you don't have a lot of discipline, you can question your own

strategies and your own skills and your own confidence and all of a sudden you're letting you know other people dictate what you believe about yourself instead of choosing what you're believing about yourself yeah there are definitely certain times where you really want a lot of input from people on social media maybe you have you have questions about things you're looking for answers you want like fan input or you want input from people you you admire or people that might be able to add some value to what you're thinking about but there are also times where when you're just sharing things about your life or sharing things about the team and you get negativity there's really not much productivity to that negativity for yourself

absolutely so there's you really have to have some safeguards in place mentally before really engaging with social media. And like you said before, some guys just go as far as I'm not even gonna touch social media while I'm in season. And I, I think that really is a fairly good way to go about it, at least in terms of mentions and comments. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So you heard about mental training from a teammate and then, you know, what, what I loved about our work together is just how really you studied it and, and became, I think, a scholar of using it and understanding it. So let's dive into thinking more about some of the principles and the strategies that helped you. So what would you say

has been the most, you know, the most impactful mental training principle that helped you. So what would you say has been the most impactful mental training principle that impacted you? I think easily for me the most impactful principle was just controlling the controllables. That's something that you and I talked about from day one, something that probably came up in almost every one of our meetings together. If I look back on our time together, uh, it's just such a simple yet profound concept to just control what you can control. And that's literally all there

is. Um, you can't worry about what other people are thinking about you. You can't worry about all these things outside your little bubble. And that, is carried over way outside of the football field for me, something that I use realistically at least weekly, most likely daily in my life. Yeah. Can you give us an example of how you used it in punting and then how you use it in your life right now too? Yeah. In punting, I literally would say um while I was on the field I would

be in pre-game warm-up or I'd be on the sideline and we had distilled it down to cnc control the controllable cnc and then for me I would talk about my drop after that just like a little self-talk thing about punting but cnc became like my mantra whenever things would go awry whenever there were things going on around me that would possibly throw me off my game it was literally saying out loud or whispering to myself cnc or just thinking in my head kind of helped me to kind of lock back in that present moment and only control that little bubble that I have, which is in punting, it's me setting up, me catching the ball and me kicking the ball. And that's it. This little bubble, this little five yard bubble I have back there,

back behind the snapper and everybody else. And that's literally my own little world. Nothing else around that really matters at that moment. And my sense is, is like when the things that are out of your control impact you, it might be the weather or, you know, the wind as a punter. When you're saying other chaos, is it like stuff on the sidelines, the pressure of the game? Like what are the things that are just really easy for a punter, NFL athlete, just to be focused on that, that aren't important for their game? Like, what are the things that are just really easy for a punter, NFL athlete, just to be focused on that, that aren't important for their game right here, right now? Yeah, I think for punters and kickers, especially, it's the weather. We kind of, quarterbacks kind of get

a little bit too, but wet conditions and wind are kind of the worst enemies of kickers and punters, just because it really can mess with our technique and it messes with how we're able to perform our jobs so early in my career if it was a really really windy bad day I would be constantly thinking about that that wind and how I was how I was going to overcome the wind it was almost like an enemy I had to defeat and I'd be thinking I'd be thinking about it like I'd be thinking about like the day before the game like oh gosh the wind's changing again checking the weather every hour to see what's going to happen on game day and it wasn't it wasn't productive in any way for me so once i got to the point where i was really implementing

the cnc control the controllable strategy it was all right before this punt let's check and see what the wind's doing. Okay. It looks like it's doing that. And here's the technique I'm going to implement because of that wind. And that was it. There wasn't any rumination. There wasn't any internalization of the wind as the enemy and getting nervous about messing up because of the wind. It was, here's the chain, the small change I'm going to make in my technique on this punt to account for the wind. And that's it. It's kind of like what you just said about the obstacle is the way, you know, instead of kind of fighting the wind or the weather, it was like accepting the wind or the weather and seeing it more objective, not, not like a personal attack

or like, oh crap, you know, the weather's doing this. It was more like, okay, this okay this more objective you know this is what's happening with the weather this is how I'm going to adjust and I like what you said about no rumination just seeing it more as factual yeah it is what it is you literally cannot control the weather it's like pretty set in stone it's going to be whatever it is without you thinking about it anymore and the tendency is like oh it's like the weather was really bad. So it's going to be okay if I don't have as good of a game. That's the natural thought process as you're thinking about it over and over again. Yeah.

Whereas there's at that level of performance of how you're supposed to perform, that's going to be no excuse in the end. So you're better off finding strategies to deal with it and, and thrive in it. Then, then think, then thinking that way. And I like that you said it's simple,

but profound. It is, it is really simple to say, control the controllables. And I hear, I hear regularly people say that, but it's really, really difficult to practice,

you know, because I think it can just lead to frustration and blame. And what you just described is like self-handicapping when we make excuses, even before we're ready, ready before we even perform. It's like, I'm not going to do very well because of the weather. And then we kind of self-sabotage ourselves. Yeah. It's like, there's no point of thinking that way before an event. Like it's not going to help you in any way like you can you can do what we call like a post-mortem where you look back and see what went wrong but that's just to kind of fix what you'll do the next time so there's no point in before an event already like you said self-handicapping yourself yes um you're just you're just limiting what you can

really do yeah um so jeff okay so that's a mental training principle that you really adapted. And I mean, before I repunt, is there, you know, what other strategies related to the mental game do you feel like were it was impactful for you? The other one that I really found helpful was a form of awareness of breath, AOB, that you and I implemented and kind of refined to my use. And we called it, you might actually call it still the 6-2-7 breath. Yes. So it's just six-second breath in, two-second hold at the top, seven-second out. And just like CNC, that was part of my pre-punt routine in a lot of my games for at least the last two or three years of my career.

And it was as I was crossing the sideline to run on the field, I was actively doing a 6-2-7 breath right before running out to go on the field. And it was, for me, the awareness of breath and that exercise was very similar to the CNC mantra. It's clearing everything else away, but also the added benefit of actually breathing that way was bringing down my heart rate before I was about to go and perform my task. There's a high heart rate for me as a punter really does nothing for me. Other players and other sports need that high heart rate to go and run extremely fast and hit someone and do what they're doing. But for me, I wanted to be very calm back there and in control. So it also helped me to settle in that way. Yeah. Awesome. Love that you're like giving really practical examples of how you used it. And

I'm not a punter you know other people who are listening aren't a punter but I like the AOB just the idea of the awareness of your breath to get in the present and that really helped you in that moment kind of get right here right now right where you cleared everything to really be at your best in the moment yeah and then it's like we've said before, it seems very simple, but it's extremely hard to do and to remember to do with so much going on around you. You've got the offense and defense running off.

You've got people that are pissed because we didn't get the first down, and now we've got to go punt instead. You've got some guys injured, and we've got to find his sub on the sideline, and everyone's screaming, where's the left tackle? Where's the left tackle? You've got all this stuff going on in front of you. And you see me just running out there, breathing casually, picking my target point and like being in my little control the controllable bubble back there. So it's very, very hard to implement. And meditation is one of the ways that I really tried to refine that I would I would practice my six to seven breath, and my level of focus on the ball when I was

meditating. So that when it came to game time, it was like I already had practice reps of doing that simple mental technique without even being on the field actually punting. Yeah. And that's important, I think, because you're practicing it outside of the chaos so that you could do it in the chaos. Yeah. You and I have talked multiple times about visualizing, right? Really, your brain doesn't know the difference in some situations when you're just visualizing the perfect rep or the perfect play or how you want to do stuff and actually doing it. This is very similar to that realm of visualization in that when I'm meditating, I can practice how my body is going to feel and what I'm going to be looking at and how I'm going to be breathing in the moment.

So that when the moment comes, I've already done this hundreds of times without actually physically doing it that many times. Yeah. Outstanding. Was there any other strategies or principles that you think were really called the mind, the mindful athlete by George Mumford. And just the concept of mindfulness really, really struck a chord with me going forward. And it was really just the act of being in the present moment fully, not just, not just saying I'm here not just like yeah yeah yeah I'm not thinking about the future at all but like fully being in the moment and that really really did help me just from a day-to-day point of view going forward from that that really bad season it was just

what am I what am I doing in this exact moment to get better and possibly be the best punter I can be on game day? Yeah. And it's tough to do. Mindfulness is just, mindfulness is like kind of a out there topic for some people. They kind of don't like the term, but if you read about it enough and you kind of try to practice it enough, it's very impactful in what it can do for you. And I think about, you know, I was just rereading his book too. George is actually speaking at our Association for Applied Sports Ecology Conference in October. So pretty pumped to hear him. But, you know, he

uses Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness, that it's like, you know, being in the present moment as if your life depended on it non-judgmentally, right? And so I think, you know, being in the present moment as if your life depended on it non-judgmentally, right? And so I think we all know that being in the present is essential for our job or our performance or whatever we're doing. But we got this kind of monkey mind that we're trying to, you know, get in the present. It's not easy. And so, you know, I think meditation is the way that you work to practice mindfulness, right? What meditation is the way that you work to practice mindfulness, right? What are the other ways that you learn to practice being more in the present moment?

Anything else that you did? Or was it just more of awareness or reading the book or tell us a little bit more about your journey to understand that? Yeah, I did. It's kind of a trick that you and I came up with talking together, but it was, we called it just intense ball focus like actually it's kind of a weird thing to say but sometimes when we're out there punting or out there kicking like the ball is just kind of there but we're not actually looking at it you know it's just

kind of part of our job we catch it we kick it but on days when I was really really like in deep flow and nothing could affect me and And I was just rolling, like having one of my best days punting ever. It was, I could almost like see every spin of the ball in the inner game of tennis. They talk about it a little bit where like, you can see the seams of the tennis ball spinning towards you. And that's all your focus is on. And the body kind of takes care of everything else. But when I was in really, really deep flow or trying to get in deep flow, I would just focus all of my attention on literally the very, very tip of that football coming out of the snapper's hands.

And then when it was in my hands, I was just staring at the ball with all my focus and trying to put that ball exactly where I wanted it in my technique. And then everything else took care of itself. I had the muscle memory to execute the rest of the punt and the swing and the steps. That's all going to take care of itself in that moment. But if I could just focus so intensely on that ball, everything else just melted away. And that was that was another form of mindfulness for me was just just intense,

intense ball focus. I can just picture you doing that. And people, I think, appreciate just like we might just, you know, see these punters or kickers or any NFL athlete on the TV and it might seem really easy. But what I'm hearing you talk about is like this deliberate way of training your craft, but also like training your mind so that you can block out all the distractions and all the noise around you and work to be at your best. So Jeff, tell us about like, what did you feel like the impact was, you know, of working

on mindset? Just tell us a bit about how that you think that improved your game and that improved, you know, your happiness and what you're doing now. Yeah, it was, it was huge for my game. I definitely had my best punting years after I started implementing a lot of the techniques that, that we had talked about. Like, like we've talked about that, that carries over to the rest of my life, especially being on this tryout circuit that I've been on where I'm just trying to get back on a team. I've been through 10 to 15 tryouts in the last two years and been told no for every tryout essentially, but one or two, it can really, really wear on you.

And you could really start internalizing and judging yourself and how you are as a person and how you are as a player. So things like control the controllables, things like my meditation practice, those are all things that have carried over to off the field and how you just deal with the day-to-day pressure and the day-to-day uncertainty of being a pro athlete. Tell us a bit about the meditation practice that you have every day because that's one of the questions I wanted to ask you is what it's like being on the circuit now and how to keep that hope alive.

Obviously, meditation is one of the ways that you do that and kind of clear each day. Yeah, I change it up. I'm a big fan of the Headspace app, which is probably one of the big three meditation providers out there. It really just depends on what I'm going for. Like the, I just finished the 30 pack on headspace, which was getting rid of stress. And it's just great to kind of go through that flow every morning. I do 15 minutes every morning. I try to do it before I look at my phone, but I don't have any other of those thoughts going on in my head already for like what, what my day is going to be like. It's just first thing in the morning,

when I wake up, I just jump on the meditation to kind of set my mind for that day going forward and a lot of times like we talked about before it'll be i'm actually like on days that i kick i make sure to do my meditation practice around that that ball focus and that six to seven breathing in my meditation itself. So I'm kind of getting my practice reps first thing in the morning for when I'm going to actually go apply those techniques later on in the day. So I vary the types so I don't get bored, really, if you meditate a lot. But I really find that doing it first thing in the morning and really setting your mind up for how you're going to

cope with what comes at you the rest of the day, it's been really a lot more beneficial to me than trying to find time later on in the day after the mind might be racing on multiple things. Yeah, started off in the right way. So awesome. You know, Jeff, one of the things that I appreciated that we did together is you wrote your purpose statement and it's actually in my book. So you were one of the first people to actually read my book before it was, you know, edited and printed. So that was pretty cool. So I'm so grateful for you. And I remember the, you know, you read everything and it was, it wasn't like it was short, right? So appreciate the effort that you put in doing that and your purpose statement is actually in the book.

So tell us about like just the power of writing your purpose statement and considering something like that. Like how did that help your punting and then how do you think that even informs your life right now? You know, it was such a unique concept when you told me about it.

I'd never really heard about it. I didn't really know what it meant when we started doing it. You guided me through the process. We probably realistically spent at least three to five hours on just working on that and trying to refine it. But it just had such, it has such a powerful impact because I'm essentially like, I'm peeling back the layers of myself to see what really, really matters to me. Like what am I, what are my core drivers in my life that I want to either

achieve or I want to like view myself as being. And the fact that I came up with it and I created it is even more impactful to this day. So when I, when I'm playing, it's one of those things like when stress hits or the team's lost a bunch of games or you haven't played well or you're just really feeling down on yourself and you need motivation. The purpose statement is just the biggest motivator I can ever read. I created it myself. And this is what I've told myself is the reason for doing what I do. So it's just so powerful for me to reference it. I have it on my phone and in my notes, and I still reference it to this day. And it's just, for me, it's a huge motivator and anchor for my life. When things get chaotic or things get a little bit out

of whack, it kind of brings me back to knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. And that I like what you said about it, the biggest motivator to help you, you know, refocus or like an anchor. So you're really deliberate about like putting it on the back of your phone. And you know, you you've clearly like used it, right? Whereas sometimes, maybe people will do the exercise but not like live it so I think there's one thing about in just reading this stuff reading about mental training reading about the power of purpose and not really implementing it that's the hard work is like living it yeah you gotta I mean you gotta have skin in the game to make it actually work

right it's like it's like you like you just said, it's one thing to read about things, but one, another thing to actually try and apply a concept you read about to your own life and work through the process of putting it into practice. That's like a whole different ballgame. And it's going to have a totally different level of impact than just reading about something. Yeah. Awesome. And if people want to learn more about how we did that, you can use Beyond Grit, the book that I wrote, in the workbook to actually guide you along that path. And you can read my purpose statement.

And you can read his purpose statement. It is in the book. It doesn't say Jeff Locke, but it's an example. Jeff, yesterday I was doing this training with some corporate leaders, and I was leading them through the purpose statement exercise and it was really impactful for them. And I used yours as an example. So that's pretty cool. So you've been doing a lot of reading lately about kind of this psychology of money and behavioral planning.

Tell us about what you've been learning and how it might help us. Yeah, there's so much carryover between kind of what we've learned and what we call the psychology of money or behavioral finance. And the first thing is just success versus outcome goals a lot and really, really huge carryover there with finance. There's this great author named Annie Duke. She did a book called Thinking in Bets. And it really talks about this concept. And it's like, essentially, the way to think about it is you have all these outcome goals, you have these outcomes in money, say you want to retire in X amount of years, you want to fund a down payment for a home, and do all these things in the future. But just like in sports, all we control is what we're

doing in the present moment. So you really have to go back and focus on the process of what am I going to do today to actually save for that goal? What are the little changes I'm going to make in my habits and my daily behaviors that are going to make it so that future goal, that outcome goal becomes a reality. So I've loved kind of seeing the carryover from what you and I have worked on in sports psychology with process versus outcome and how it carries over to so many ways in finance and investing. I see it all the time in terms of just having to really focus on what you can control in the present, which is mostly your spending behaviors and your saving behaviors to help you get to goals that you want in the future,

which has been, it's actually been a lot of fun to read about that type of stuff. And I'm thinking about how you have to suspend, suspend like short term wants, you know, for, for longterm gains. And it's like,

yeah, I'd really like this Starbucks cup of coffee, but it's not going to, if I do this every day, not going to allow me to save, you know, X amount of money. And I know you, Jeff, have spoken to a lot of different NFL teams about this idea of finances and, you know, the psychology behind that. So what are some of the messages that you might deliver? Because we might think these guys, you know, make all these millions and millions of dollars, but not everybody who plays makes that much money, right? But it's good to know that like, there's education out there about

what you can do. So tell us a bit about that experience. And what are some of the key points that you might provide another, you know, NFL athlete? Yeah, it's's very interesting because I've spoken to some rookie groups on the teams that I've been on, guys that are just coming into money for many of them for the first time in their lives. And a lot of it's more money than you could dream of being an NFL player. But it's tough because on the same

or on the opposite side of that statement is the reality that the average NFL career only lasts three and a half years. So you're making all this money, but it's going to go away much sooner than you really think it is. So one thing that you'll appreciate, Cinder, is I have, I really call it, you kind of have to have a separation between your athlete mind and your money mind when it comes to being a pro. On the athlete side, you have to do all the things we talk about. You have to literally believe up to a point that you are the best at what you do to be able to perform at the highest level. But then on the money side of things,

you can't have that mindset with your money because that means I'm going to be the best forever and I can spend on whatever I want and do whatever I want with my money. It's going to always keep coming in. And that's just not the reality. There are so many things outside of your control that can happen. Injury being one of the biggest ones, unfortunately, that can derail those long-term plans. So you have to have this total separation between how we think on the field versus how we think in our bank accounts to actually save a large, large portion of that initial money we make just in case we don't get to that second or third contract and really make that life-changing

money of like, I don't have to work ever again. That's one of the things I try to impart on the rookies. And it's very hard because that's the last thing you're thinking about when you just made the NFL. It's like, I got to start thinking about, I got to start thinking about when the NFL ends. But it's a tough, it's a tough reality. And I think also what's tough is like, I know this happens where guys get pressure. Yeah. Can you give money to this charity? Your, your mother wants a new car.

Like all of a sudden all these relatives are asking you give money to this charity? Your mother wants a new car. All of a sudden, all these relatives are asking you for money because they think you got big time money as an NFL athlete. How do you manage all that? It's so tough. I was very fortunate that I did not have a family background where I have a lot of people coming to me to try and get money or get loans or help pay for things. But I know there are a lot of players who come from unfortunate backgrounds and they have people that they need to help support. And it's very hard to find that point of drawing the line and helping in a certain way or trying to help in a productive way without just kind of opening the

floodgates and all of a sudden you've got no money left for yourself to help when you have to transition out of football or to help when the unfortunate injury happens and things kind of go sideways that's it's something that I still struggle with giving advice on because it's just it's first of all it's really hard for me to put myself in some of my teammates shoes who are going through this type of thing with family. And it's where do I draw the line? And how do I tell my family, like, look, this money is not going to come in forever. And I got to look out for when I'm done playing and I got to support my own, my own small family. It was one of those things that I still go, I'm still trying to learn as much as I can about, about helping in that area.

Yeah, for sure. Is there anything else you've been reading about the psychology of money that might be beneficial? Yeah, I think one concept that I really love that I think has a lot of carryover, there's this phrase in finance, there's no such thing as a free lunch, essentially. And it applies to a lot of areas of

finance and investing. It comes from essentially when you were being pitched to do some new investment, you get invited to this free seminar and they'd have these nice steaks and stuff at the seminar and everything was totally free. But of course, they're really just trying to sell you this investment that has some giant commission or they're going to make a bunch of money off you far and above the free lunch that you got. And really, there's no such thing as a free lunch in life at all. I think we try to find shortcuts, whether it's I want to find this investment with this gigantic return possibility, I want to be in the next, I want to be in the next Uber or Lyft to make all this money off of my small initial investment. But it's very hard to actually make that become a reality.

The probabilities are so low. And if things sound too good to be true, they probably are. Yeah. So that goes with investing. I mean, it even carries over to social media. We have all these social media apps, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. They're totally free, right? But you're paying with time and attention on all these apps.

So it's how do you value your own time and attention when you're on them? And you got to remember these companies, they're for-profit companies trying to make money. And so they're trying to use your eyeballs to then sell them to advertisers. So it goes back to that thing I said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Yeah. And it carries over to sports. It carries over to things like dieting. If you try any of these like diet shortcuts, it might work for like a month.

But actually taking the time to change your eating habits for the long term is going to be way more beneficial. It's actually instilling these very good habits in dieting, in how you spend and save your money. They're going to carry much further than the possible free lunch shortcut that kind of gets sold and that we see all the time. And the easy part is to take the easy route, right? Like that's what we wanted because it gives us this kind of short term fix. But it's really hard work to make those lifestyle changes. If it was easy, everyone could do it. So anything really worthwhile in life is going to be extremely hard to do. That's the only way you're going to see this major benefit to you. Jeff, I'm so grateful that you spent time

with us really talking about your mental game and how you've used it. And I thought I would summarize what I got from today. So I was writing some notes as we were talking, and I appreciate what you said about at the beginning about how like it's really the mindset that separates those from others. It's really like the mental game. And you talked about two things, like how the best are really deliberate with practice, not just going through the motions. They don't have a light switch, so managing that, I think that was really fascinating.

And then some concepts we talked about were like process over outcome and giving yourself that advice in the 2015 season that you'd stay more focused on the process and and your your talk about the obstacle is the way how it was really like this obstacle that was your springboard to success and then your application of like cnc control the controllables and awareness of breath aob and just you know how you're talking about training this intense fall focus with meditation.

So Jeff, I'm so grateful that you were on to share your lessons with other people. What's the final message that you'd like to leave for others who are listening? Yeah, I think the final message is just kind of what I just said at the end and then apply it across. It's like anything that is really, really worth doing is going to take a lot of time and effort, whether it's the stuff I was talking about in terms of changing my mindset or the techniques that I use to really get in my zone and flow. It's going to take time and take practice. So just get to it. Stick with it. Awesome, Jeff. Thank you so much

for being here on the podcast today. Yeah, thanks, Sindra. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.